/lit/ - Literature

>>14704220
>Vedanta is sloppy metaphysics.
It's really not, but it's quite easy to misunderstand if you have never studied the primary texts of it yourself. I find Neoplatonism to kind of sloppy insofar as Plotinus equates matter with evil and is never able to fully explain how and why evil arises, among other things. The other day I saw someone who may have been you who said "Plotinus is perfect so long as when you understand that when he wrote X he actually meant Y" and then the guy wrote a fairly long list of stuff where you have to do some mental gymnastics to make Plotinus more coherent, there are no such mental gymnastics required with the work of Shankara. Everything in Shankara's writings can be accepted as they are and it all makes sense, this is why you never see people cite the actual sentences he wrote in his writings for the purpose of explaining why the reasoning in those individual sentences is wrong but you only ever see people attempt to present a portrayal of his ideas which most of the time upon further investigation turns out to be inaccurate.
>>14704189
Another definition would be eternal Bliss, as Bliss can only be experienced by a sentient presence, however Brahman is not a person or subject enjoying Bliss as it's object but pure Bliss itself, which is non-dual, without any duality whatsoever. Pic related addresses this subject.
>>14706497
>Ramanuja uses this exact reason to disqualify mayavada since the sruti texts such as the Vedas and the Upanishads would be part of Maya itself and could therefore not lead to Jivanmukti (direct knowledge of Brahman).
Jivanmukti means one who has been liberated, not knowledge of Brahman. Ramanuja thought that Bhakti and not knowledge of Brahman leads to liberation btw. In any case, this doesn't disqualify Advaita though because the very nature of revealed scriptures of divine origin is to show the reality of the Divine. If the Sruti texts come from Brahman as Ramanuja and Shankara both accept there is no reason why they wouldn't be endowed with the capacity to lead to liberation even if they are a part of maya, while they are a part of the same illusion the very divine nature and purpose of the texts would endow them with the capability to do so.
>The Buddha however escapes this paradox via his raft parable which makes the case that his Dharma is no longer required once Parinibbana is achieved ie was only meant to shred away the fetter of views... the same could not be said for Shankara's mayavada
In fact the same could also be said for Shankara, as Shankara maintains that the main purpose of the Upanishads is to destroy ignorance and that this is what the etymological meaning of 'Upanishad is', this complete destruction of ignorance leads to the self-luminous Reality of Brahman shining forth of its own accord in its true nature, which leads to liberation, so the Upanishads do indeed shred away the fetter of false views and ignorance.

>>13488677
>Ah. So as I understand it, and please correct me if my understanding is wrong, you have a principle for the creative force of manifestation and maya, ignorance, without discernible beginning or cause preceding it, which in itself is not ultimate.
see this pic for an explanation of the relation between Nirguna and Saguna Brahman
>how is Brahman Saguna somehow more satisfactory than dependent origination?
Because it dispenses with all the flaws of dependent origination described in this post >>13488704
>It still comes down to 'without discernible beginning.' With no explanation of its origin.
There is an explanation of its origin though, the Upanishads and Vedanta describe Maya as a power of the Lord, by subordinating it to the eternally and beginninglessly existing Supreme Being there is no longer any question of how it could possibly arise or how it could be orderly or all the problems viz which steps comes in which order etc.
>>13488818
Can you elaborate on what point you are trying to make? What are you trying to say about ontological incompleteness and how do you think Advaita and Buddhism differ on that point and how are you trying to say that Goedel's theorem supports one over the other?
>>13488829
>First you say that Buddhists refuse to go any further than what the Buddha taught. Then you talk about how Buddhists made up scriptures in order to explain Buddhism further than what the Buddha taught.
Completely wrong, I never said that they "refuse to go beyond what he taught" but I just talked about the general attitude of Buddhists to be dismissive of metaphysics involving asking questions about dependent-origination and similar things, obviously when Buddhists made up scriptures dealing with that kind of metaphysics they are talking about this stuff which is exactly why I said here >>13488501 that it was hypocritical of Buddhists to throw the label papanca at Vedanta while reading these same fake scriptures talking about metaphysics
>because the Upanishads aren't clear enough to bring about a coherent doctrine just by reading them.
They clearly say in unambiguous terms that Brahman is "the inner Self of all beings" (Mundaka U. 2.1.4.) and that “He who knows that supreme Brahman becomes Brahman indeed“ (Mundaka U. 3.2.9); the rest is just working out the details around the metaphysics, the essential part of the teaching is stated openly and directly though.
>Buddha obviously came to create a a religion with all that it entails, which isn't true of the Upanishads.
The Upanishads are the teachings of an already existing spiritual tradition belonging to an existing religion and they describe the process and procedures for imparting knowledge of the teachings down to students who become in time the next line of teachers and so on, they aren't just a bunch of unconnected ramblings, if you think this it's only because you haven't read the commentaries which very clearly adduce the meaning.

>>13432003
I've read multiple intro books to Vedanta and found Guenon's work to be helpful in understanding some of Shankara's ideas, but I can understand how his way of writing may some throw people off. Nevertheless, it'd be prudent to wait until you've read a lot of Shankara before denouncing Guenon's book on Vedanta.

>>13432053
There are three other good intro books to Shankara that I'd recommend besides Guenon's. The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy by Sharma, The Essential Vedanta by Deutsch and Vedanta Heart of Hinduism by Torsten. They each have different pros and cons. All three are free online.

The Advaita Tradition is one of my favorites, the author covers Madhyamaka and Vijnanavada Buddhism along with Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism. The author takes the unconventional position that Buddha, Nagarjuna, early Vijnanavada and Shankara were all more or less just pointing at the same truth in different ways, he has good and bad things to say about tantra. He has some very lucid writing on Shankara's ideas which explain them with great clarity, pic related is an example of some of his writing. The only downside is the Advaita section is maybe only a 1/3 of the book, but within that is a very good review of his ideas (and you could just read this without reading the whole book if you wanted)

https://archive.org/details/TheAdvaitaTraditionInIndianPhilosophyChandradharSharma

The Essential Vedanta is a long book consisting of long quotations from the Prasthanatrayi texts accompanied by large swathes of Shankara's commentaries, and also has many passages from works of post-Shankara Advaita thinkers. They do a good job of selecting some of Shankara's more important writings where he reviews and explains key concepts, there is minimal explanations by the authors between each selection of texts, although in the intro they explain enough of the terminology that if you pay attention you should get most of it. One thing to consider about this though is that if you plan on reading a lot of Shankara's works then you'd end up rereading hundreds of pages of stuff you'd already read here, in other words if you want to read a lot of Shankara it may be better just to read another intro book that explains his ideas and terminology and then just dive right into his works. Only the different thinkers of traditional Advaita are covered in this book

https://archive.org/details/EssentialVedanta.TheANewSourceBookOfAdvaitaVedantaSeeAdvaitaVedantaAPhilosophica_201701

Vedanta Heart of Hinduism is another good primer that focuses mostly on Shankara, with additional chapters on Ramanuja et al, and later 18th-19th century figures on Ramana Maharshi, Vivekananda etc. Like 'The Advaita Tradition' this book is consists of the author's explanations of their ideas and not long passages of Shankara's etc works. It's translated from German, but still good.

https://archive.org/details/VedantaHeartOfHinduismHansTorwesten/page/n7